HIS32250 Religious persecution and migration in early modern Europe

Academic Year 2021/2022

This course examines the linked phenomena of Early Modern religious persecution and migration. Prior to the Reformation four major religious groupings, Catholic and Orthodox Christians, Muslims and Jews, together with some more minor groupings, were present in the continent of Europe. The Reformation vastly complicated the confessional mosaic of Europe with the emergence of many different forms of Protestantism. In the same timeframe, large swathes of the Northern Balkans came under Turkish control. Over the course of two centuries many different forms of religious persecution ensued which resulted in considerable mobility as individuals and communities left their homelands in search of more congenial societies.

The first part of this course examines the emergence of the new confessional map of Europe between 1517 and 1650 and considers why most of the states of Europe were consciously repressive of religious difference while a minority, such as Poland and Transylvania, were markedly more willing to accept religious heterogeneity. The course will then examine the phenomenon of Confessional mobility in sixteenth century Europe establishing what type of people were pushed to leave their homelands and the role that religion played in influencing their choices. The last part of the course examines a number of largescale migrations, from the Habsburg lands in the first half of the seventeenth century, the expulsion of the Moriscos in Spain, population transfer in Ireland and finally the expulsion of the Huguenots from France in the last decades of the seventeenth century.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this course students should have achieved a thorough understanding of the operation and extent of religious persecution in Early Modern Europe and the degree to which it was responsible for migration.

Students should have gained experience of analysing primary documents and secondary historiographical literature to a level appropriate for the final year of a BA programme.

Students should have gained experience of writing essays and contributing to seminar discussions at a level appropriate for the final year of a BA programme.

Indicative Module Content:

Class Schedule

Week 1

Confessional Europe

Reading
Benjamin Kaplan, ‘How Religion and Politics Intersected’ in Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe’ Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 99-124.
Available electronically through UCD Library, http://quod.lib.umich.edu.ucd.idm.oclc.org/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=acls;cc=acls;rgn=full%20text;idno=heb30739.0001.001;didno=heb30739.0001.001;node=heb30739.0001.001%3A4.4;view=image;seq=00000113


Week 2

Early Modern Migration

Reading

Steve Hochstadt, ‘Migration in Preindustrial Germany’, Central European History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Sep., 1983), pp. 195-224 available on JSTOR
Roger Thompson, ‘Early Modern Migration’, Journal of American Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Apr., 1991), pp. 59-69, available on JSTOR

Week 3

“Infection” and “Purification” of the Body Politic

Reading

Ariel Salzmann, ‘Is there a moral economy of state formation? Religious minorities and repertoires of regime integration in the Middle East and Western Europe, 600-1614’, Theory and Society, Vol. 39, No. 3/4, Special Issue in Memory of Charles Tilly(1929–2008): Cities, States, Trust, and Rule (May 2010), pp. 299-313, available on JSTOR

Terpstra, Religious Refugees, pp. 38-104

Week 4

The Expulsion of Jews

Reading

Terpstra, Religious Refugees pp. 105-112, 135-9;

Henry Kamen, ‘The Mediterranean and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492’,
Past & Present, No. 119 (May, 1988), pp. 30-55, available on JSTOR

Jonathan Ray, ‘Iberian Jewry between West and East: Jewish Settlement in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean’, Mediterranean Studies, Vol. 18 (2009), pp. 44-65, available on JSTOR

Week 5
Jews and the Christian Commonwealth in the Seventeenth Century

Reading

Mark R. Cohen, ‘Leone da Modena's Riti: A Seventeenth-Century Plea for Social Toleration of Jews’, Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Oct., 1972), pp. 287-321, available on JSTOR
Benjamin Ravid, ‘"Contra Judaeos" in Seventeenth-Century Italy: Two Responses to the "Discorso" of Simone Luzzatto by Melchiore Palontrotti and Giulio Morosini’, AJS Review, Vol. 7/8 (1982/1983), pp. 301-351, available on JSTOR
Sina Rauschenbach, ‘Mediating Jewish Knowledge: Menasseh ben Israel and the Christian Respublica litteraria’,The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 102, No. 4 (Fall 2012), pp. 561-588, available on JSTOR
Menasseh Ben Israel, To his Highness the Lord Protector of the Commonwealthof England, Scotland and Ireland. The Humble Address of Menasseh Ben Israel, a Divine and Doctor of Physick, in behalf of the Jewish Nation, available on Brightspace.
Week 6
Sixteenth-century Protestant exiles
Reading
Terpstra, Religious Refugees, pp. 112-132;
Jesse Spohnholz, ‘Instability and Insecurity: Dutch Women Refugees in Germany and England, 1550-1600’ in Jesse Spohnhlz and Gary Waite (eds), Exile and Religious Identity, 1500-1800’ London, 2014), pp. 111-124 (available on Brightspace)
Lien Bich Luu, ‘Migration and change: Religious refugees and the London economy, 1550-1600’, Critical Survey, Vol. 8, No. 1, Diverse communities (1996), pp. 93-102, available on JSTOR

Week 7
The expulsion of Moriscos
Reading

Mercedes García‐Arenal, ‘Religious Dissent and Minorities: The Morisco Age’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 81, No. 4 (December 2009), pp. 888-920, available on JSTOR
Gerard Wiegers, ‘Managing Disaster: Networks of the Moriscos during the process of the expulsion from the Iberian peninsula, around 1609’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2010), pp. 141-168, available on JSTOR

Newes From Spaine, The King of Spaines Edict for the Expulsion and Banishment of more then nine hundred thousand Moores, available on Brightspace
Week 8
Austrian and Bohemian Expulsions
Reading
Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic Europe, 1592-1648: Centre and peripheries (Oxford, 2015), pp. 97-118, available on Blackboard
Vladimír Urbánek, ‘Displaced Intellectuals and Rebuilt Networks: The Protestant Exiles from the Lands of the Bohemian Crown’ in Timothy Fehler et al (eds) Religious Diaspora in Early Modern Europe (London, 2014), pp. 167-79, available on Brightspace
Johann Amos Comenius, The History of the Bohemian Persecution, pp. 250-239, available on Brightspace

Week 9
Migration and persecution in seventeenth-century Ireland
Reading
Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British (Oxford, 2002), pp 534-50, available on Brightspace
Aidan Clarke, ‘The “1641 Massacres”’ in Micheál Ó Siochrú and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds), Ireland 1641: Contexts and Reactions (Manchester, 2013), pp. 37-51, available on Brightspace
Selection from the 1641 Depositions, available on Brightspace
Week 10
Huguenots
Reading
Susanne Lachenicht ,’Huguenot Immigrants and the Formation of National Identities, 1548-1787’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Jun., 2007), pp. 309-331, available on JSTOR
Molly McClain and Alessa Ellefson , ‘A Letter from Carolina, 1688: French Huguenots in the New World’, The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Apr., 2007), pp. 377- 394, available on JSTOR
Ruth Whelan, ‘The Huguenots and the Imaginative Geography of Ireland: A Planned Immigration Scheme in the 1680s’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 35, No. 140 (Nov., 2007), pp. 477-495,
Carolyn Lougee Chappell, "The Pains I Took to Save My/His Family": Escape Accounts by a Huguenot Mother and Daughter after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes”,
French Historical Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1999), pp. 1-64, available on JSTOR
Escape accounts of Marie and Suzanne de Champagne, available on Brightspace
Week 11
Conclusions
Terpstra, Religious Refugees, pp. 309-29

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

11
Seminar (or Webinar)

22
Specified Learning Activities

95
Autonomous Student Learning

95
Total

223
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
This is a small-group, seminar-based module. It is taught through a one-hour weekly
lecture and a two-hour seminar. The weekly lecture provides an overview of the
week’s topic. The weekly
seminar is focused upon individual active / task-based learning by means of class
debates, discussion and small group work. Advanced research, writing and citation
skills are developed through analysis of primary
sources and historiographical material, and a semester-long 4,000 word research project.
Autonomous learning is advanced through student-led debate and discussion of set
primary and secondary sources. 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Assignment: 4,000 word research paper Coursework (End of Trimester) n/a Graded No

40
Continuous Assessment: Seminar participation, document analysis and mid-term essay Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded No

60

Carry forward of passed components
No
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Spring No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Peer review activities

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Students will receive individual written and one to one oral feedback, by appointment, on their first written assessment and on their general participation performance in the course of the module. Feedback on their overall module performance and on all aspects of their written and oral performance will be available by appointment following the School Review of grades at the end of the Semester. Peer-review activities are built into the module seminars.